Admittedly I skimmed large portions of that, but I’d like to take a crack at bridging some of that inferential distance with a short description of the model I’ve been using, whereby I keep all the concerns you brought up straight but also don’t have to choke on pronouns.
Categories of Men and Women are useful in a wide variety of areas and point at a real thing. There’s a region in the middle these categories overlap and lack clean boundaries—while both genetics and birth sex are undeniable and straightforward fact in almost all cases (~98% IIRC), they don’t make the wide ranging good predictions you’d otherwise expect in this region. I’ve mentally been calling this the “gender/sex/identity is complicated” region. Within this region, carefully consider which category is more relevant and go with that; other times a weighted average may be more appropriate.
By way of example if I want to infer likely skill-sets, hobbies, or interests for someone trans, I’m probably looking at either their pre-transition category, or a weighted average based on years before vs after transition.
On the other hand if I’m considering how a friend or conversation partner might prefer to be treated, I’d almost certainly be correct to infer based on claimed/stated gender until I know more.
On the one hand I can definitely see why those threads got under your skin (and shocked The Thoughts You Cannot Think didn’t get a link); not the finest showing in clear thinking. Ultimately though I’m skeptical that we should treat pronouns as making some deep claim about the structure of person-space along the axis of sex. If anything, that there’s conflict at all should serve to highlight that there’s a large region (as much as 20% of the population maybe???) where this isn’t cut and dry and simple rules aren’t making good predictions. Looking at that structure there’s a decent if not airtight case for treating pronouns as you would any other nicknames or abbreviations—namely acceptable insofar as the referent finds the name acceptable. There are places where a “no pseudonyms allowed, no exceptions” rule should and does trump “preferred moniker”/”no name-calling”, but Twitter clearly isn’t one.
Admittedly I skimmed large portions of that, but I’d like to take a crack at bridging some of that inferential distance with a short description of the model I’ve been using, whereby I keep all the concerns you brought up straight but also don’t have to choke on pronouns.
Categories of Men and Women are useful in a wide variety of areas and point at a real thing. There’s a region in the middle these categories overlap and lack clean boundaries—while both genetics and birth sex are undeniable and straightforward fact in almost all cases (~98% IIRC), they don’t make the wide ranging good predictions you’d otherwise expect in this region. I’ve mentally been calling this the “gender/sex/identity is complicated” region. Within this region, carefully consider which category is more relevant and go with that; other times a weighted average may be more appropriate.
By way of example if I want to infer likely skill-sets, hobbies, or interests for someone trans, I’m probably looking at either their pre-transition category, or a weighted average based on years before vs after transition.
On the other hand if I’m considering how a friend or conversation partner might prefer to be treated, I’d almost certainly be correct to infer based on claimed/stated gender until I know more.
On the one hand I can definitely see why those threads got under your skin (and shocked The Thoughts You Cannot Think didn’t get a link); not the finest showing in clear thinking. Ultimately though I’m skeptical that we should treat pronouns as making some deep claim about the structure of person-space along the axis of sex. If anything, that there’s conflict at all should serve to highlight that there’s a large region (as much as 20% of the population maybe???) where this isn’t cut and dry and simple rules aren’t making good predictions. Looking at that structure there’s a decent if not airtight case for treating pronouns as you would any other nicknames or abbreviations—namely acceptable insofar as the referent finds the name acceptable. There are places where a “no pseudonyms allowed, no exceptions” rule should and does trump “preferred moniker”/”no name-calling”, but Twitter clearly isn’t one.